Saturday, 18 May 2013

A leading Satmar hasidic rabbi in Mea Shearim, Jerusalem has now ruled that haredi soldiers who want to return to haredi neighborhoods to visit friends or family cannot do so wearing their uniforms.

If they do arrive in uniform, haredim are instructed to shun them and to expel them from haredi synagogues and study halls.

And a haredi organization recently published a guide telling haredi yeshiva students how to dodge the draft. It says that the time may quickly come when haredi yeshiva students will have to commit suicide to evade military service, just like Jews killed themselves at other times, like the Holocaust, when oppressive powers tried to force them to lose their religion or commit perverse sexual acts.

But that ante has been upped considerably by anonymous death threats sent to haredi soldiers by the “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Bnei Brak, Revolt officer.”

Yeshiva World reports that the letters call IDF uniforms “tamei” (ritually and spiritually impure) and warn that if the haredi soldiers are not out uniform and away from the impure military bases in two weeks, an all-out war will be fought against the haredi soldiers “at the correct time and place.” The letters warn haredi soldiers that this is a “warning on your life.”